The first roughie and the work of Herschell Gordon Lewis and producer David F. Friedman, Scum of the Earth! Tells the story of Kim Sherwood (Vickie Miles, AKA Allison Louise Downe, who was also in several other Lewis movies like She-Devils on Wheels),a college girl She-Devilshe wrong way and ends up trying to pay her tuition with glamour photos. But you know how the road to hell goes. It ends up going deeper and deeper, with Kim getting blackmailed into doing more and more explicit photos and dealing with sexualized violence, which is pretty insane for 1963.

Shot in six days and filmed in the same Miami locations that Blood Feast stained, it was made in black and white so that it would look filthy, like some kind of smoker film that would start turning on some old cigar smoking men before turning on them and shocking them with its willingness to make its sex violent. There's also the matter of Sandy, another older girl, and her willingness to put the young Kim through all this so that she herself can escape.

Lewis - and Friedman - were the kings of talking you into the theater. They blessed this movie with some of the best taglines ever, like "Hell is their only address and they offer you a cheap substitute for fulfillment ... in exchange for your soul!" and "Depraved. Demented. Loathsome. Nameless. Shameless. These are the Scum of the Earth!"

Lewis also knew how to write some dialogue, with stuff like "All you kids make me sick! You act like little Miss Muffet and down inside you're dirty, do you hear me? Dirty! You're greedy and self-centered and think you can get away with anything. You're no better than the girl who sells herself to a man, you're worse because you're a hypocrite. And now little Miss Muffet is in trouble and she's all outraged virtue. Well you listen and you listen well, you're damaged merchandise and this is a fire sale."

This was beyond hot stuff in the early 60s. Now you can stream it into your home. Times have changed.

Written and directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, SCUM OF THE EARTH is evocative of the early 60s "make out" flick featuring semi and full nudity. The acting is atrocious, but you don't watch this for the acting. Trying to earn money for acting lessons in Hollywood, a winsome beauty Kim Sherwood(Vickie Miles)is tricked into a dirty picture racket, when she agrees to take photos for a sleazy photographer(Thomas Sweetwood). After posing topless, Kim is blackmailed into taking more daring shots with a muscle-head named Ajax(Craig Maudslay Jr.),who loves to crack a whip. Before she can escape the whole sordid mess, there is a couple of murders that leads to a suicide. Early exploitation flick that could have been a whole lot scummier. Also in the cast: Sandra Sinclair, Toni Calvert, Mal Arnold and Lawrence J. Aberwood.

A naive and innocent teenage girl (Allison Louise Downe) is blackmailed into modeling in the nude for a photographer who is in league with a teenage gang whose boss illegally sells photos of teenage girls being abused and degraded.

First of all, let's get it out of the way: the father (Edward Mann) is possibly the worst actor who ever lived. Downe, on the other hand, does a great job, and it is interesting that she transitioned from nude victim to one of Lewis' longest collaborators.

Allmovie wrote, "Unintentionally funny and poorly photographed, this film certainly has its moments for connoisseurs of bad cinema, but others will find it tawdry and dull." This may be true, but to put it in the context of H. G. Lewis, it is actually one of his better-made movies and the film quality has held up well. Most of his films have awful prints, but not this one. Even the score seems pretty decent.